


Photo Number 69

by isuilde



Category: Free!
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Unrepentant Fluff, mindless fluff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 23:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14988017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isuilde/pseuds/isuilde
Summary: A photo of Makoto, and how it accidentally uncovers the insecurities they have.(It is never about the photo.)





	Photo Number 69

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to write something with slightly more substance, but I keep losing my rhythm so I thought I’d write somehing lighter to warm up. Maybe I’m just rusty.
> 
> Train ride writing result, unbeta-ed, there might be a lot of mistakes.

On October of his second year of high school, two weeks shy after Iwatobi High School Cultural Festival, Rin stares at the photo Gou had sent him through LINE, hesitates for half an hour, and then finally calls Haruka.

“Your school’s photography club,” he says without preamble when Haruka finally picks up after five missed calls. There’s a distinct sound of water on the other side, and Rin is a hundred percent sure Haruka is annoyed because Rin is intruding on his private soaking time, but this is sort of an emergency. “Gou said they already published the Cultural Festival photos and you can buy them for 100 yen each.”

A brief silence, punctuated with a distant sound of bubbles popping. Haruka must have submerged half of his face in the water. Rin is probably on speaker. “.....is Makoto there?”

A splash. A few seconds of nothing, and then a lazy, “...no.”

“Oh, good. Because I need you to buy this photo—“ Rin pauses to check the earlier picture that Gou had sent: an entire wall of Cultural Festival photos tacked on it, each photo sporting a number. “Number 69.”

“Why,” is Haruka’s only response.

“Because you’re the only one I can ask. You’re the only one I know who is in second-year, and underclassmen are not allowed to buy upperclassmen’s photos.”

More noises of bubbles. Rin waits for a total grand of ten seconds, and then follows, “I’ll buy you that one artbook that you’ve been wanting. The one that has a section of various bodies of water.”

He can hear Haruka considering it. “Hardcover edition?”

“Fuck no, my wallet won’t survive that!” More bubble noises, and Rin groans. “Are you really going to extort me for one a hundred yen photo?”

“You have his photos. A lot of them,” Haruka points out, his voice slightly echoing on the bathroom walls. “And you can just ask him, you know. I’m sure he has some photos of the Cultural Festival.”

Okay, Haruka has a point, but. “I can’t ask him for a photo of _only_ him. That’s—Haru, he’d _know_ —”

“About time,” Haruka mutters, but Rin chooses to ignore that and streamroll over it. “—and he already knows that Gou and Nagisa have been sending me photos of you guys in the Cultural Festival, so it’ll be weird.”

“So buying the photo from the photography club isn’t?”

Rin is just glad that this conversation is happening over the phone, because Haruka is never going to see how quickly his cheeks flush red. “Shut up, it’s for sale. Doesn’t the photography club ask the people on the photos if it’s okay to sell them?”

Haruka hums. “I think Makoto said yes because they kept hounding him. They knew that photo is going to sell a lot.”

Rin snorts, because of course. The existence of the Tachibana Makoto Secret Fanclub of Iwatobi is not exactly a secret, even if Makoto doesn’t seem to be aware of it. And Photo Number 69 is an astoundingly good photo: a corner of the classroom where Makoto caught unaware from behind in the middle of changing, the shirt halfway over his raised arms, back muscles proudly displayed and his eyes half-closed, the light falling just so to highlight the curve of his nape that is slightly bent forward. Rin thinks he wouldn’t even mind kissing the photographer for this photo. “Yeah, Gou did mention that this one might sell out.”

And really, let no one say that Nanase Haruka is not a good friend, because Haruka lets out an exasperated sigh and tells Rin, with an underlying resignation in every word, “If you would just ask him out, you wouldn’t even need a photo, you can just tell him to undress in front of you.”

Rin makes a face, but he’s also half-smiling because he knows Haruka will get that photo for him. “I’d still want that photo,” he returns, just because. “It’s the principle of things, Haru. I see him half naked at the pool all the time, it doesn’t matter, I want that photo.”

“I’m saying,” Haruka replies dryly. “Just ask him out already.”

“No,” Rin says, and he doesn’t tell Haruka that he can’t because he’s eighty percent sure Makoto actually has a crush on Haruka. He’d just picked himself back up after years of constant anger and pain and broken heart over swimming, he isn’t ready to run his heart through a shredder that is Makoto’s smile and rejection yet.

Haruka gets him Photo Number 69—he even slips it into Rin’s bag wordlessly the next time they all hang out at that one burger joint by the Samezuka station. Rin laminates the photo before tacking it onto the backcover of his daily journal, and that’s the end of it.

Life goes on.

**——-o0o——-**

Oddly, when the year finally changes and Rin finds himself in an unexpected positon of Tachibana Makoto’s boyfriend, the daily journal with Photo Number 69 gets shelved like any other finished journal at the end of the year. He doesn’t even remember that it’s got Photo Number 69 on the back, despite it costing him a considerable amount of money for one flimsy a hundred yen photo.

Maybe Haruka’s right in the end. Maybe photos don’t really matter when he has Makoto—actual living being, warm Makoto who somehow still has so many expressions and sides for Rin to learn. Maybe a photo of Makoto changing does not matter much when Rin had a folder of fifty-something images of candidly-taken pictures of Makoto sleeping, and another twenty-something of Makoto squinting at English textbooks.

Maybe he simply just forgets; the way people forget about an important slip of paper they left in a book or the five-thousand bill they hid in one of their dictionaries.

Either way, it isn’t until early December of their third-year when Makoto’s visiting the Samezuka dorm under the excuse of Rin tutoring him in English (really, it’s just coincidence that Sousuke has a doctor appointment today), that Rin accidentally knocks down his old daily journal when he was trying to pull out one of his old Englishphrasebooks, and Makoto manages to catch it open.

Right on the back cover.

“Oh,” Makoto says, nothing but surprise in his voice, and Rin blurts out, “fuck.”

Makoto looks up at him. They stare at each other for a good twenty seconds, before Rin moves to snatch his journal away from Makoto’s hands, face aflame, and stammers, “I-It’s not what you think! Really it’s not, it’s just that Gou was teasing me about stuff and she sent me a picture of the wall, with the photos, and—a-and I just happened to see—“

“Oh,” Makoto deflates slightly, eyes softening. “I was hoping that it was exactly as I thought, but...”

Rin almost bites his own tongue in trying to swallow the words back. “I—uh. What.”

It’s ridiculous, how Makoto could still peer up at him shyly when they have done a lot of things that are more embarrassing than this. “I thought you bought that photo.”

Rin stares at him, unsure what to say. “I did,” he says, blinks, and then shakes his head. “I mean, Haru did. I had to bribe him with an artbook, but he bought it for me.”

The tips of Makoto’s ears are red. Cute, Rin thinks, and he leaves the journal on the floor, closes the two-steps distance between him and Makoto, and leans forward. “Makoto...?”

“The Cultural Festival was in late September,” Makoto says, words muffled now as he buries his red face into his hands. Rin resists the urger to pry those hands off, to make Makoto show him what sort of expression he’s making. “I just—I didn’t—Rin, you already liked me? Back then?”

“I wouldn’t have been bribing Haru if I wasn’t,” Rin says, dumbfounded. “I didn’t—Makoto, you didn’t think I woke up one morning early December suddenly in love with you and decided to confess, did you...?”

His boyfriend shrugs minutely. “I think,” he replies, the words almost too soft to hear, “sometimes I’m still waiting for you to come to your senses and—and then break up. With me.”

“Oh,” Rin breathes, something in his chest constricting because even if he knows Makoto has some self-confidence issues, he isn’t sure how Makoto could doubt how much Rin loves him, because even the dumbest of them all (yes, Momotarou, it’s you) could see how far gone Rin is for Makoto.

Except Rin remembers the anxiety that bubbles in him whenever Nagisa tease him about how _Mako-chan was confessed to again today_! and the wistfulness when Gou told him about Makoto winning the three-legged race in Sports Day for his class, and the worry when Rei mentioned about how Makoto had been fretting about Haruka’s future. Remembers watching Makoto sleep and wonders why him, why does Makoto even bother with him when he’s all stubbornness and high temper and selfishness, and _does Makoto really love him?_

Stupid thoughts, Rin knows. Because he understands that Makoto does—from the cherry blossom pool surprise to their kitty dates to the nightly phone calls and messages exchanges to how it’s always Makoto’s number that calls him when the rest of the Iwatobi wants to talk to him—he knows Makoto loves him. But it’s too easy to forget about these things in the face of baseless anxiety and groundless worry; just like how easy it was to forget that Photo Number 69 despite the effort spent to get it.

So Rin takes a breath, and doesn’t scold Makoto for it. Doesn’t call Makoto’s name and tell him that Rin loves him and he has no reason to doubt it. Because Rin knows Makoto doesn’t doubt it, the way Rin doesn’t either. Some feelings just can’t be helped. So instead, he leans forward and gathers Makoto into his arms, presses a kiss on the top of Makoto’s head, and admits, “me, too.”

Makoto’s voice is tiny, questioning. “...Rin?”

“Sometimes,” Rin says. “I feel like I’m waiting for you to come to your senses and break up with me.” 

Insecurity is as irrational as love itself. Rin thinks maybe, just maybe, just like love, they’ll find it easier to face when they have admitted it.

Makoto shifts in his arms, twists just so until he could nuzzle the crook of Rin’s collarbone, and etches I-love-you in a single breath against Rin’s skin. Rin closes his eyes and memorizes it, so maybe he could remember the next time he forgets how much he is loved.

**——-o0o——-**

One week later, Makoto snags him into one of the print club booths when they dropped by the game center to buy the most recent Ookuchin Hosoeson-kun’s plush for Haruka, and they both laugh their way into a hasty photo session, trying not to be loud enough for the staff to discover them. 

Maybe this matters. Maybe it doesn’t. But as Makoto presses their foreheads together, eyes crinkling with laughter, Rin thinks that he doesn’t mind forgetting about this printed picture of them, of the silly poses and stolen kisses caught on camera, slipped into one corner of his wallet.

As long as when he’d get to find it again, years down the road, he’d still have Makoto by his side, trading soft smiles and gazes unchanged.

In love. 

**——-o0o——-**

**Author's Note:**

> One fact: some game centers in Japan prohibit men to come into purikura booths/floor without being accompanied by at least one female being. I don’t get it either.


End file.
